


"Through nights like this"

by canyouseemyspark



Series: Pre-series [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, Canon Related, Childbirth, Death, F/M, First Time, Love, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Prompt Fic, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 11:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/418148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canyouseemyspark/pseuds/canyouseemyspark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Ned/Ashara post Brandon's death and Ned honoring the agreement with the Tullys, and this poem:</p><p><i>I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.</i><br/>My voice tries to find the wind to touch her hearing.<br/>Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.<br/>Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.<br/>I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.<br/>Love is so short, forgetting is so long.<br/>-Pablo Neruda, Tonight I Can Write</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Through nights like this"

**Author's Note:**

> The timeline might be a little screwy because so much of Ashara's character and life is based on speculations and conjectures so I apologize in advance for any mistakes!

He was hers, once.

She had felt his eyes on her that night, noticed the way he blushed when she so much as glanced his way or brushed past him in the massive corridors of Harrenhal. Then, she was young and naïve (she was still young but hardened now, weary and skeptical), then she would tease all of her would-be suitors, pressing close during dances, happily accepting all of their little trinkets and sweet words. Then, she was not cruel ( _Am I cruel now? Aye, but only to myself_ ), would only taunt those who could give as well as they received.

His brother was like that, all smirks and japes, sauntering through the tourney every bit aware that all of the women were mooning after him, were wishing they were his Tully bride.

Ashara would have wished it too, had she been born a different woman, had she not known that for all the eyes that were on him even more were on her, constantly watching, waiting, assessing the exact moment to step forth and ask her for her favor, for a dance, for a kiss.

His brother was as much night as he was day, a boy (for boy is what he was, as much as she was a girl) more suited to the silence and scowls.

She had not been surprised, then, when Brandon Stark approached her, a smile lighting his handsome face, his face glowing red from the wine and from the heat in the room. She  _was_ surprised, however, when instead of asking her to dance he directed her attention to her brother (My lady, he said, my brother would ask for your company for this dance, a shy lad he is, he said, but a magnificent dancer and then he had laughed and laughed).

 _I should have said no, I should have said I would much rather dance with him, should have allowed him to take me in his arms, should have smiled and cooed and allowed him a kiss if he made me laugh._

But instead she had agreed, noticing the way the younger brother was anxiously fidgeting with his hands, averting his eyes from her.

That was the beginning, the end of it all.

They danced for half the night. He was clumsy on his feet and was not as quick-witted as his brother but there was a kindness in him, a spark in his gray eyes (beautiful eyes, how did she ever think them dull?) when he talked of Winterfell, of his brothers and particularly of his sister. In a strange way he reminded her of her own brother, all honor and duty.

Perhaps then that's why she lead him out of the main hall even as the music crescendoed, as the almost impossible number of couples twirled around them, why she slipped her hand around his arm and kissed him in the shadows of the gardens.

He almost pulled away and for one horrified moment, her heart dropped.  _This is what rejection must feel like._ But then his hands were on her skin, caressing her neck, her collarbone, and the rise of her breasts before he suddenly pulled away as though having touched a flame. His kisses were sweet and soft, sweeter still when it became clear that she was the first woman he had ever pressed his lips against.

In the days that followed, there were more dances, more jousts, more kisses and fevered touches. His hands were on her face, then her neck, her breasts, caressing her nipples until she moaned in his mouth, pressing against her mound through her gown until she bucked against him like an animal. Her hands moved to, from his black locks to his muscled chest to the hardness in his breeches which she eased by spreading her own thighs, allowing him to thrust against her, making love through layers of clothes.

They only  _truly_ made love once. It was the night before that dark day, when all of their plans turned to dust with a crown of flowers placed on a head of that Northern girl - a beautiful girl they now said, but truth be told no one but the prince and her betrothed gave her a second glance, not when half the court was looking at Ashara and the other half looking at the Princess ( _weak they called her, dreary and sad, but she was twice the woman Lyanna Stark was_ ). When their caresses were no longer enough to quell their desire, she had taken him into her chambers, taken him inside her, all the while promising that she was no maiden, that he was not dishonoring her, even as her body clenched in anticipation of the pain. She was grateful that her maidenhead had broken years ago, small drops of blood spilling into Oberyn Martell's skilled fingers, the most she had let any man touch her before Eddard Stark.

There had been promises of marriage then, of children and of a life together, but the Starks had hurried back North almost as soon as the crown touched Lyanna Stark's head. As Ashara began to notice the queasiness in her stomach, the bile that built up instead her every morning, she also hurried home, south to her beloved Starfall where she swelled with child and waited for Ned to come for her.

She received a letter in his place.

His handsome brother was dead, her father too, his sister disappeared and Ned to be married to the Tully girl, Brandon's bride who had been robbed of a husband.

It was some cruel jape, some trick that the gods were playing on her, that even as his child kicked within her she was holding in her hands a letter that told her he had forgotten her, that Ned Stark, the most honorable man in the Seven Kingdoms, was abandoning the woman to whom he had once promised eternal love in order to marry a stranger. 

She had been angry at the Tully girl, the woman who had stolen her life, at Rhaegar for crowning that foolish child, at Brandon Stark too for asking her to dance with her brother instead of taking her into his arms himself (maybe he would have taken her maidenhead too but there would not have been whispered words of love, only pleasure and laughs, and moon tea for her in the morning), even angry at Arthur for convincing her to serve the princess and sending her away from Starfall. Anyone but Ned, her Ned, the man who had made love to her as though it was their last time together (not knowing, neither of them knowing, that it was indeed the last), who had knelt between her thighs and kissed her, burying his face in her wetness and sighing, enjoying it as much as she was.

She waited for weeks after receiving the letter, waited foolishly for him to come to her, to tell her he had set aside the Tully girl, to beg for forgiveness and take her into his arms, to kiss the swelling of her stomach and ask her what names she thought of for their child.

Instead of Ned another letter arrived, this time from Elia. She was the only one she had told of her affair, of the child, the only one who knew the true reason Ashara had been forced to abandon her. 

It seemed selfish to her now to have burdened Elia with this when she had her own secrets to keep, her heartache poisoning her heart even as Ashara gushed about her love, the man who was so different from anyone who she had ever met (except Arthur, sweet Arthur), who was going to marry her and make her Lady of Winterfell. She giggled and blushed even as Elia's sadness was festering within her and as much as she thought of her Ned, Elia was thinking of his sister.

Now she could remember the words in that letter better than she could remember Ned's face, than the feel of his arms around her, the look in his eyes the last time she saw him.

"Word has reached King's Landing that Eddard Stark is married to Catelyn Tully and has ridden off with the Tully forces. Have courage, you have been betrayed as I have but you will take comfort in your child, as I do in Rhaenys and Aegon. When the Usurper is dealt with, you will come back and we will raise our children together. Be brave, dearest, you are ever in my thoughts. We will be together soon."

She should have thrown the letter away, should have burned it, but something kept drawing her to it, some wounded part of her wanted to re-live the pain and she was reading it, constantly reading it, etching the words on her heart.

Her rage had been quelled by the hope that he would come for her but she knew now that she would never be Lady of Winterfell, never rule beside him, never feel him between her thighs or hear his words of love. Those would be saved for a Tully girl now, the one who had dreamed of Brandon Stark but had gotten his little brother instead, not understanding that underneath his somberness was the kindest man Ashara had ever met, a man who she had picked over all others, who she had loved and taken for her own even as the rest of the men at court were crawling over each other for her hand.

 _The girl was probably as sad to lose her Stark as you are to lose yours_.

But there was no room for rationality and Catelyn Stark was added to the list of people who had aided in her misery.

She would have lost herself in her grief had it not been for the babe in her stomach. Half of the babe was Ned after all, she would be bringing into the world his first-born, a feat that even Catelyn Stark could not boast of. A part of her was anxious to see the child so she could see Ned one more time, perhaps look into his grey eyes once again or see a hint of his smile in the curve of the babe's lips. 

But there was a part of her that awaited the birth of the child for other reasons ( _dark reasons, wicked reasons_ ). Rumors had travelled across the Seven Kingdoms, delivered to her by her handmaidens. They knew she was pregnant, had been told by her attendants that she had sought a maester to help ease her suffering from the mother's stomach. Some said Brandon Stark was the father, the handsome wolf who was seen talking to Lady Ashara in between dances. Some said it was her own brother, said that the Daynes were taking after the Targaryens. Some still had guessed Ned was the father, claiming they had seen them hiding in the shadows of the castle, kissing and touching. If Catelyn Stark had asked after her husband, she would have heard the rumors too, would always walk around with a part of her knowing that he had loved another before her as Ashara knew he had loved another after. And Ned, he would always know that his child lived somewhere with the woman he had betrayed even as he looked into the faces of his red-haired Riverlands litter.

That day, she was sitting by the window, looking out at the waves crashing across the shore, when all went dark around her and she awoke to a searing pain pulsating through her lower body, the sight of the maester scurrying around the room, and the sound of screams (her own, she realized, and she screamed louder). There was the smell of iron and a wetness all over her thighs, as though she were drowning in blood. Suddenly the maester was standing over her ("My lady, you must remain awake! There is too much blood, my lady, stay awake!") but her eyes closed once again and the pain was gone.

The child was gone too, as she learned when her fever finally broke and she was able to rise from the birthing-bed a week later. She had lost her daughter, a babe with black hair and gray eyes whose cries she would never hear, as she had lost her maidenhead, lost Ned, lost the piece of herself that was good and honest and kind. 

She had not been able to see the child, had been lost to the sleep of the milk of the poppy while her daughter was buried.

That was the end for her, she knew it even as the maester delivered the grim news.

So when Ned came to her (not _for_ her), bringing with him the broken body of her brother, sitting in the halls of Starfall, she had allowed her hand maidens to dress her in her most beautiful gowns, clasping to her wrists and neck her most expensive jewels, letting her hair run wild across her shoulders ( _I love your hair_ , he said once, a lifetime ago).

She had dismissed them then and, with the Lord of Winterfell waiting for her, had taken those first few steps onto the ledge of her window, had felt the spray of the seawater on her face and hear the waves smashing against the rocks. 

She had betrayed herself even in the final moments.

As she let go and felt her body falling through the cold wind, all she could see was his face, his smile, her Ned.


End file.
